Socks: After
by dragyn42
Summary: They almost weren't together, but pure determination overcame that. They had their lives with each other. And then one task remained… An epilogue to the wonderful story Socks, by Deadwoodpecker, with permission from the author.


He looked around. Getting there was certainly more peaceful than he expected. He wasn't entirely sure where, exactly, it was, but… it _felt_ right. There was a meadow. It was oddly reminiscent of the field behind The Burrow.

He walked, because there was nothing else to do. Well, he guessed he could wait, but for what? It's not like he had anywhere to be. Whatever would come would come, so he walked. The breeze was pleasant – if somewhat non-directional – and carried the scent of flowers.

A path appeared, and, still not really caring where to next, he followed it. He passed through a forest of pines and oak that, though towering, didn't blot out the light. Birds tweeted and chirped, singing their songs, and the breeze rustled through the branches. A stream burbled merrily on by, crystal clear, and showing schools of tiny, colorful fish darting to and fro.

Up ahead, at what appeared to be the end of wood, was a latticed archway. And just visible in the light was a bench. The closer he got, the quieter the sounds.

As he passed through the arch, the noises disappeared, but the bench took on definition. It was an old, iron frame with smooth, wooden slats, and there was someone sitting in it. Her very obviously red hair fell down between her back and the bench.

"You're finally here," said the occupant. He couldn't mistake her for anyone else.

"Ginny?" he asked, the first time speaking since arriving. "You've come to take me on?"

"Not exactly," she said. "Come, sit with me."

Doing as she asked, he rounded the bench to take her in. It had been longer than he wanted to see her again, but he didn't want to face her should he have decided to show up sooner. She was beautiful, as beautiful as he remembered. Her skin shone with youth, pale and freckled. She was as she had been decades ago, some nondescript time between her late teens and early twenties.

He could stand there for eternity looking at her.

"Come on. Sit," she offered.

Shaking himself out of staring, he sat on the bench as close to her as possible without sitting on her lap. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in. She responded by laying her head on him.

"I missed you so much," he said, his voice cracking.

"I missed you, too. But, you're here now. We're here. Together."

"Is this it? The Next Great Adventure?"

She laughed, shaking against him. "No, no it's not. But it's not bad here. Not for us."

"I could stay here with just you and be happy."

"Me, too, Harry. But we do need to move on."

"But you said you weren't taking me on."

"No, I said I didn't come here to take you on."

Harry pulled away, just a bit, and looked down at Ginny's vibrant hair. "You're not making sense, love."

"Harry, I didn't come here because I never left. I've never been on."

"You… but… Why?!"

"It's our own fault, really. It was our wedding."

"Our… wedding?"

"Our vows. They're supposed to be 'Til death do us part.' Yeah?"

"We changed them."

"We changed them," she agreed. "'Til death and beyond,' we said."

"So you…?"

"So I," she stated as agreement. "I can't go on without you, Harry. We're together. Always."

"I should have come sooner. I knew it."

"Don't you dare. We have eternity, Harry Potter. A couple years in the face of that? It's nothing. I've waited before, not knowing if I would ever get you. This time, I knew you were coming. You were alive, and we both know how precious that is."

"I guess."

"Plus, I had ways of entertaining myself."

"Oh?"

"Look, Harry. Look," she instructed.

Looking forward once again, he came to realize the grass stopped. Everything stopped. It wasn't white, or black. It wasn't nothing, because that indicated something. It just wasn't anymore.

And beyond that was a chair. It wavered, like looking through a haze of heat. It was a plain chair, nondescript wood, simple legs, and an indication of some kind of back. It was as if the chair was there to be a chair, but didn't matter.

But, in the chair, that mattered.

"Alastor?" he asked.

"It is," Ginny answered.

"What is he doing here?"

"He used Dark Magic."

"I'm aware. But I'm not sure that explains things."

"His next adventure would have been determined by that. But, even now, even here, he insists that what he did was the right thing. That, despite being Dark, it was _good_. His convictions left whatever is beyond in a quandary."

She stopped for a moment and he turned back to her. He asked, "What quandary?"

"What if he was condemned, but we, those most directly affected by him, agreed with him? What if we felt that by volunteering, we accepted that what did happen was something that we recognized and concurred with? Would the condemnation be proper? Or, worse, should we be condemned as well?"

Harry buried his face in Ginny's hair, breathing in, yet knowing he didn't have to. Her scent filled him, and nothing else mattered. He would have been willing to let whatever fates responsible take Moody and do whatever – free him, condemn him, leave him, he just didn't care.

"It doesn't matter," he said.

"No, it doesn't," she agreed.

"But?"

"Three questions. You get to ask three questions, and then you make your decision.'

"How does that matter?"

"Finish it, Harry. Bring it all to an end."

"In all this time, you've only asked him three questions?"

"No. I told you, I found ways of entertaining myself. But I made my decision after three. Those are the rules. He's a stubborn man, that one."

"What decision."

"Not until we're done."

"What questions?"

"Not until we're done."

Harry yet again looked towards the nothing chair, and the occupant that caused so much difficulty in their lives.

"It doesn't matter. I don't care," he said. "I have you, Ginny."

"You'll always have me, Harry. I'll stay here with you forever. But, do this for you. Do this for Tonks and Bill. For the twins. Do it for the ones we never found."

"Why does it always come down to me?"

"It doesn't."

Standing up, Harry moved beyond the grass.

"Potter," said the gruff voice. "You're looking well."

"I wouldn't know."

"We look the way we felt in life. Ginny, out there, was the woman who got you. That's who she is now, the woman she was when you two found each other. Auror, mother, writer, all of that hinged, to her, on finding you.

"You, on the other hand, are the man you became."

"And yet, you still have your fake eye, your wooden leg."

"I was and am a dark wizard hunter, Potter."

"That's all you were then?"

"Is that a question?"

Harry focused on what his life had been. His childhood, his school years, the war. He focused on those years under Moody's charm, and the pain of the year without Nosy. He remembered the nights where Ginny raged against the past, being apart, poisoned, without Harry, or Grumpy, or her family. Suffering without even being able to say anything. Her parents all but forgot her.

"You hurt us. All of us," Harry stated. "You took away our ability to connect after the war. Without that, it was never over. Not for us."

"But it was for everyone else. We sacrificed, they survived. They could live without the monster at their door."

"We were fighting not just for them, but for us – assuming we made it. We were children. We had families. You took that from us as surely as Tom did."

"We had leaks. We were losing, dying. Our sacrifices stopped those leaks. They lead to our victory. It was necessary."

"You took away our families and loved ones. None of us know how many died lost and alone, cut off from everyone they knew, because of you. What made you better than Tom?"

"Britain, muggles, the world, they were all safe because of what we did. Voldemort would have burned it all to the ground."

"And did you ever consider what happened if you died? All of this was put into place for if we were captured, or otherwise turned. But you held all the cards. You used magic none of us would ever have thought. Did you ever, even once, stop to think about what would happen if you were not around to remove the charms and spells?"

"It didn't matter. I had every intention of removing those spells when we were done. But, if I couldn't, then either we lost and were all dead, or everyone else was safe. It was the price to to keep our secrets, to prevent Voldemort from discovering our plans. They were the key to winning."

"Winning at all costs. That was your plan. You used Dark Magic, Alastor, Blood Curses. You told me just now, you're a dark wizard _hunter_."

"That's what made me uniquely qualified to use their own tools against them. I used their spells to put and end to them. They used them as a sword for Voldemort. I used them as a shield for everyone else."

"And you never considered another way? You never considered that traitors were the price to pay for trusting? You gave up your trust of us entirely, and forced us to become incapable of trusting ourselves. Bill hated Ginny for what she did; he couldn't trust her. She was possibly the biggest hero of the war, and you left nothing of her behind but distrust."

"Aye, I considered other ways. I didn't come to my decisions lightly, lad. But we needed something foolproof. Dumbledore proved the folly of sticking to our principles. We would have lost. We didn't."

Harry stared at Moody for a moment. He turned, looking back towards Ginny, realizing for the first time that the grass, the bench, the trees, none of it was visible.

"I've made my decision."

"I know you have, lad."

"I need to tell you this…"

"You need tell me nothing, Potter." Moody cut him off.

"I respected you. I trusted you. You threw that away, Alastor. And, despite that, I know why you did it. We were in a hard place. And, you're right, we most likely would not have won. So you made the decisions you felt you had to.

"I forgive you. You didn't _intend_ to hurt us the way you did. You chose the path you honestly felt would let us beat Tom. And, as much as it disappoints me, you were right.

"But you threw away everything that we were fighting for to do it. You took trust, family, and future, and you tossed it aside in the name of victory. Without those things, you were no better than the dark wizards you hunted. There was nothing _good_ about what you did."

And, with a final breath, Harry decided there was nothing else to say. As he said earlier, it just didn't matter. They overcame Tom Riddle; they overcame Alastor Moody. He had Ginny. They had their family. Maybe they would see them on the Next Great Adventure, or maybe they wouldn't. But their future was theirs, and neither Riddle nor Moody had a hold on them anymore.

Harry took a step away from the chair, and Ginny was in his arms.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"I was before."

"I know."

"Did you forgive him?" he asked.

"I don't know that I ever can."

"Will we see him again?"

"One person."

That caught Harry off guard. "One person?"

"Just one person has to agree with him, Harry. One person has to not only understand him, but say that what he did was good. Just one. Do you realize how many of us have passed, now?"

"The price paid for Dark Magic."

"The price paid," she agreed. "And now we move on."

"Til death and beyond."

"Til death and beyond." She kissed him, holding his head tenderly between her hands.

Arms around each others waists, they together stepped back through the archway and faded from the wood.

 _A/N: As I mentioned to Ella, after finishing Socks, I felt the need to revisit Moody. Everyone else in the story had an ending except the, arguably, most influential person in the story. I really needed an understanding for him. This was written about an hour later. I do hope you've enjoyed it._


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